The End of the World: The New Battlestar Galactica (Spoilers Allowed)

Oh Lord, this gives me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

If there's supposed to be an extra HOUR that'll make it onto the DVDs, then that would imply a whole extra hour of material that would fill out the backstories and other little details (like how Adama and Kara managed to get the location of the Colony out of HybridAnders) and an extra hour that would make everything make sense.

Given how little all the details of Part 1 fit together, I'm concerned about how well it'll all fit by the end of the end. They've effectively stripped 25% of the story out of the finale for the televised version. That doesn't sound so bad if it's 25% of 'Deadlock' or 'Islanded in a Stream of Stars', but 25% of this episode could be a pretty serious disappointment.

 

Yeah, that was an interesting scene. Yes, Baltar is a narcisist, a sex addict and a pathological liar, but he wasn't exagerating when he said that other colonies tend to look down on people from Arelon. I got the impression that Julius Baltar was a deeply ignorant man.

 

Speaking of the Baltars, did anyone catch Gaius's f-bomb during that scene with his dad? "I need this like a ****ing..."

(at least that's what I heard both times I watched it)

 

Yeah, I though I heard that too, but I couldn't be sure. It was almost too quick to hear.

 

Good acting as usual.

Episodes that are drawn out and all set-up are frustrating at best. This final season is a whole lot of that. I am expecting 1 of the 2 hours in the finale to be the same =(

 

Oh yeah, that was there. When I first heard it on television, I thought maybe I had misheard, but it's there. I wonder if someone decided to stick it in (or someone higher up on the show's chain of command, but not part of the studio) let it slide since it's the finale and all. It's so perfectly timed that it almost seems like a setup. 'Course, it could have just been the actor getting involved in the character in an important scene and momentarily forgetting a cue.

Confession - I laughed. And rewatched it three times.

 

Thought I heard the f-bomb, but wasn't sure, glad I wasn't the only one.

I gotta say, that was a great episode, but it really could have been aired anytime from Season 3.0 onwards.

I'm a little nervous about only having 2 hours left to tie everything together (notice they didn't have the drum-heavy spoiler bit at the opening credits for the first time ever?), and like others, I'm assuming we'll have the director's cut on DVD...which I would be okay with, I suppose.

I had been arguing ever since Kara came back that time travel had to be involved in some way (i.e., not only does she come back to life, but she has a brand-new Viper as well), and now with the reveal of the black hole singularity, I think we're either going to see a time travel scenario or else a parallel universe kinda thing.

My brother thinks they're all going to "die" at the singularity and get transported to heaven where everyone's alive in a different reality.

 

If I recall correctly, they did this for a time at the beginning of Season 2.0 for a few episodes. I think they mostly did it to save time, since it went right from "Previously on..." right to the credits. ...and I really hope they do a new "prologue" for the last episode.

 

ok...the finale better rock the mind...cause they just laid 2 eggs in a row going into the finale.

This episode was fragmented almost to being unintelligible!

Also...anyone else notice in the trailers for next week what was happening? Skinjobs vs. Humans...I didn't see any Centurions!

Are you kidding me!? If the Final 5 somehow get the Centurions to not fight, and it comes down to a pistol fight between Cavil and Adama, I will be royally TICKED. This show is forgetting itself as it bows under the strain of endless unanswered questions and unrealized progression.

It's season after season of saying "no" to answers and conclusions of any kind.

 

My brother and I always cover our eyes, my wife always watches them.

 

i am still hoping that kara is athena in exile.

 

For anyone who didn't catch the special on sci-fi tonight... expect LOTS more flashbacks in the finale.

Also, it wasn't explicitly stated, but don't count on getting ANY answers at all. Tonight's show implied to me that the entire finale is meant to be specifically, explicitly, entirely a meditation on the characters, with closure not a priority.

 

WTFrakkity Frak? I mean, come on! We've followed this show for what 5-6 years now, and they don't have the common frakking decency to answer some of the huge questions?!?!?!?

 

If you read into most of RDM's comments on the ending, it is character driven, not plot; Kate Vernon confirmed this recently in an interview when she said that people will continue to speculate after the finale about all different kinds of things, and that's what's supposed to make it "magical".

Supposedly, we fill get a definitive answer to the Opera House, Hera's significance, and the entire "Head Six/Baltar" thing (although it is beginning to look like all we will see is that there is indeed a "higher power"-but we won't get any answers as to what it is, may only it's role), and finally, the deal with the song.

I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be furious after Friday night, but again, it is going to come down to what one's expectations are going in. Some people want to see action and space battles, most want answers to burning plot questions, some like the character focus.

I personally want answers. Who the frak were the Lords of Kobol and how do they fit into all of this? Also, why did the 13 tribes separate and leave?

Oh yeah, finding out what's up with Kara would be nice as well.

Peace,

V-03

 

As much as this is one of my favorite shows ever, using character-driven flashbacks to end the series on an emotional note sounds like a load of crap to me.

Sounds like Moore really had no idea what the heck was going on.

My expectations for the finale have been dropping steadily for the last month.

 

As far as not answering every last question we have...maybe they are, n fact, leaving them to be answered in The Plan, or perhaps it's a set up for a (very clever, in my opinion) metaphor for life. Think about it - as we go through life, how many questions do we have? Plenty. Many go answered, and yet many more go unanswered...ex "I wonder what ever happened to them?" or "I wonder how s/he really felt about me..." etc type questions. You can speculate on it until you die, and you'll never have a definitive answer...and that's just how it is.

It sounds like it will be a very open-ended finale, but let's just wait and see before we get too unhappy about it

 

You know, I've watched all but the last two or three episodes, and if it is a very open-ended finale that doesn't reveal much, I think I'll be okay with that. Honestly, if that's how it works out, is it that bad? Like the person above me said, most questions in life don't get revealed. We don't know everything. And we just as well shouldn't. Mystery is what keeps everything going. If we knew the meaning of life, we would just try to fulfill it. Not knowing, and the quest for the knowledge itself is better than what you attain, because you learn more on the quest to attain something than you do when you actually learning. What I'm saying is that 15 years in the future, if they reveal everything, you'll look back into the series and only think of what happened in the end. But not knowing what happens and then going back into the series allows you to weigh what happened, add it to what you know, and come up with your own conclusion. It makes you think. What's wrong with that?

These things should be like puzzles. You put it together. It might look right to you, but to others, it might not. Choose what you want to believe, back it up with things you can see from the show, then decide what happened.

I'd rather this than lay everything out in front of us and say: this is this, and that's final.

 

Uhhh, aren't those the only really big questions that need answering anyways, other than "how the hell is Kara dead-but-alive"?

 

Moore from a podcast regarding one of the well-liked fan theories:

"...I should probably say as a sidenote -- I know that there is a tremendous amount of speculation out there on the Internet -- that Kara is the daughter of Daniel or that Daniel, Daniel being the Cylon model that was killed or destroyed or aborted, however you want to choose to define it, by Cavil, that there's a connection between Daniel and Kara and that's part of the revelations that we're gonna reveal in the finale. I don't typically want to, like, put theories to rest, because it kinda spoils the enjoyment and fun of people in the show, however I do think it's worth saying that that is not part of the plan.
...
In this particular case, I don't want people to really be distracted through the finale by this other idea which has gained a tremendous amount of currency on the Internet and among fan circles and that's probably my own fault, because I don't think I realized the impact that the backstory of Daniel would have in "No Exit." I sort of thought that it was an interesting story about, that defined something about Brother Cavil, or John Cavil, and his backstory and how he reacted to the threat of someone else being as beloved as he was. It was a sorta Cain and Abel type allegory. All those reasons, -- I just thought it was an interesting piece of backstory, but in recent weeks I've realized that the Cult of Daniel has grown and there's a tremendous amount, there's a LOT of people out there who are now investing a tremendous amount of time and energy and thought into the notion that Daniel is really a powerful figure in the show and mythos and is directly related to Kara, and I don't want anyone listening to this podcast -- I don't want you to go into the finale with your Daniel-hopes up too high, because that's really not part of the plan. And again, I apologize if people think that that was such a gigantic mislead or clue or something. That was not the intent and I don't think I anticipated how strongly that would be grabbed by people."

 

And what was the deal with Pre-Disco Drunken Lee? At least his hair looked normal. Then they cut back to the present, with his poofy, teased 'do.

Am I wrong in thinking that was the first time Kara and Lee meet? How is it, then, that Bill Adama thinks of Kara as a daughter? I would think that for that to be true, they would have gone back further than just a few months before the attack.

Or maybe the flashbacks weren't happening at the same time(s). Zak died two years before the Cylons attacked. Roslin's last flashback contained what appeared to be her feeling pain, probably the first sign of her cancer manifesting itself. Baltar's flashbacks seem to be much closer to the attack-date, probably only weeks prior to it. There wasn't anything concrete to judge how long before the attack Anders' flashback occurred. I also find it odd that he's the only confirmed Cylon who was chosen to be featured in this manner.

On another note, though, did anyone catch that one particular Anders hot-tub quote in full?

"Spins and turns, angles and curves. The shape of dreams, half-remembered. Slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of perfection -- a perfect face, perfect lace. Find the perfect world for the end of Kara Thrace. End of line."

This happened very quickly in the episode, and was passed off very casually by Starbuck, but it's almost certainly important. Everything a Hybrid has ever said about Starbuck has been taken very seriously by the characters, but we're not shown what Adama and Starbuck make of this. Turns out that "Slip the surly bonds of earth" and "Touch the face of God" are both from the poem "High Flight" by John Magee. It was most famously quoted by Ronald Reagan in the televised address he gave to the nation right after the space shuttle Challenger blew up. Reagan said the astronauts had "slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

But "Slip the surly bonds of earth" and "Touch the face of God" don't actually come next to each other in the poem. That was entirely Reagan's editing. However, the fact that Sam is quoting a poem from "our" Earth could have some interesting implications, as well as provide some clarity as to the overall timeline in general.

Sam Anders had been introduced as a fairly affable former-jock-turned-rebel-fighter who simply longed for simpler days as a Pyramid player. But in one scene, that starts with gratuitous nudity (I mean really, did he have to do the interview in a bathtub that looked like it was saved from the old space-western sets of Firefly?), he's introduced in this vein, and yet by the end of the scene, you forget the guy's in the buff, and has totally redefined the character by adding oceans of depth to him.

That stuff is clearly still in the data-stream if Anders is spouting it off, no? All bald now in his frothy tub.

 

Here is Baltar's line: "I need this like a ****ing hole in the head."

When I first heard him say the word, I had to stop our TiVo and replay it three times just to make sure I him right. He DOES say "****ing." The closed-captioning, however, uses the word "frakking."